Author: CoinList, translation: Jinse Finance xiaozou
On June 20, 2024, Coinlist announced that it would launch the Nillion Network token NIL community public sale from June 20 to 27, and the Nillion community round financing valuation was $400 million.
What is Nillion Network? Coinlist recently talked with the Nillion team to discuss the current state of AI, the practicality of NIL tokens, how Nillion can help builders develop new privacy applications (Nillion use cases), the Nillion team's vision for the future, etc., and use 6 questions to take you to explore it in depth.
1, What is Nillion?
Nillion is the first Blind Computer of mankind.
Imagine that a digital clone of you can act as your assistant-an artificial intelligence that knows you better than you know yourself.
Sounds exciting or scary? In any case, it's coming. But it has a serious problem: data.
That’s why developers from Uber, Coinbase, Consensys, Google, Nike, Polygon, Amazon, and Hedera spent 3 years building Nillion, the foundational layer of the internet for all private data.
Nillion has entered the data wars and is providing builders with a powerful set of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to develop innovative applications such as personalized AI. This technology allows data to remain invisible (encrypted) while it is being used - a feature that is critical to the future of AI and beyond. Since then, blind computation has attracted the attention of developers in AI, DeFi, custody, wallets, identity, messaging, and more.
2 What problems does Nillion solve? What opportunities does it provide?
Nillion’s blind computation network opens a new paradigm in AI, keeping data and models private. Nillion creates a decentralized alternative for data that cannot be entrusted to companies like ChatGPT or the fully open source Crypto x AI network.
But blind computation goes beyond AI. Nillion provides programmable private data capabilities not available in blockchains and other off-chain coprocessors, unlocking use cases far beyond AI. More than 35 companies have officially partnered with Nillion to build networks. Use cases include decentralized private dark pools, quantum-secure messaging, healthcare analytics, crypto custody, identity authentication applications, and more.
How to achieve this vision? Orchestration Layer
In cryptography, there is no panacea that can do all the work. Different privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), such as different kinds of multi-party computation (MPC), fully homomorphic encryption (FHF), and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), are designed to solve different use cases. Nillion brings these technologies together to create a foundational layer for encryption and blind computation.
3How does Nillion solve issues related to scaling, especially as the network continues to grow in users, transactions, and data storage?
At the heart of the Nillion network architecture is the concept of clusters. Each cluster consists of a different number of nodes, depending on the security, cost, and performance assumptions of the different clusters. Given that the computing network is not a blockchain driven by the concept of a global shared state, it can scale both vertically and horizontally - growth in storage or computing needs can be absorbed by expanding its infrastructure across the cluster or by joining additional node clusters.
Each cluster can be set up with a specific group of nodes with different hardware to handle different storage or computing requests, for example, by providing a large amount of storage to handle more secrets, or by providing specific hardware to accelerate specific types of computing. The cluster approach makes the network more flexible.
4What role does the NIL token play in the network? How is it used for transactions, governance, or other functions?
Security and coordination layer: Pledge NIL to obtain voting rights for ensuring network security and determine who can become active validators (using a proof of stake authorization mechanism).
Managing Network Resources:Users must pay NIL tokens to use the coordination layer or make blind computation requests, making network resource management possible.
PetnetCluster Economics:Infrastructure providers who join the cluster to facilitate blind computation and provide secure storage of resources for the network will be rewarded with NIL tokens.
Network Governance:NIL holders can vote on on-chain proposals at the coordination layer or delegate their voting rights to others.
5Have you noticed Nillion’s partnerships with projects in various verticals, such as AI, DeFi, healthcare, and messaging? What benefits do these partnerships unlock? What other use cases are you particularly excited about?
（1）AI
Nillion unlocks private training and inference of AI models, creating a decentralized alternative for sensitive data that cannot be entrusted to transparent encrypted networks such as OpenAI or Bittensor (TAO). Specifically, it unlocks the following benefits:
AI Inference:Nillion enables enterprises to access proprietary cloud solutions such as ChatGPT without sacrificing privacy and security. At the same time, Nillion enables model sharing without leaking IP. Integration collaborations with companies such as Ritual or Nesa show that existing encrypted AI networks have a strong desire to integrate Nillion into their networks to meet private AI computing requests, positioning Nillion as a universal backend for private AI computing.
Data Sharing for Profit:The privacy of network data storage enables personal data to be shared for AI training and profit without sacrificing privacy. For example, Rainfall AI is a privacy-preserving private AI platform that enables users to profit from real-time intelligence generated from their data. Such products enable businesses to better understand, engage, and acquire customers.
AISemantic Search:Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology is a key part of today’s AI landscape, enabling users to deliver relevant, customized content when running LLMs. Today, the process of semantically searching vector data requires trusting a company to store and process that vector data. Skillful is a company building a privacy-preserving RAG that stores vector data on the quantum-secure Nillion network while semantically searching that vector data without decrypting it.
AISynthetic Data:Synthetic data can be generated while unlocking collaborative model training without revealing any private data. This process produces more data and higher accuracy. Mizu aims to leverage the Nillion network to facilitate the generation of private synthetic data.
Agents:Protocols like Virtuals Protocol aim to use the Nillion network to create personalized, private agents. With Nillion’s sensitive, personalized data, agents can be widely used without sacrificing user privacy.
(2) Decentralized Computing
Nillion provides programmable data privacy capabilities not present in blockchains and other off-chain coprocessors. Blind computation networks greatly expand the design space of applications, such as:
DeFi ... The two builders are building on top of each other’s solutions, embodying the benefits of creating an open public network.
Healthcare:A fully privacy-preserving approach for analyzing patterns in sensitive medical data. For example, patient data such as blood tests can be pooled and processed in a fully compliant manner. Maya Health uses real-world evidence to inform clinical practice, drug development, and regulation to support safe, effective, and accessible psychedelic development practices. The company will use the Nillion platform for collaborative computation on secure private user data.
DAO: Blind computation capabilities enable DAOs to obtain pre- and post-vote privacy protections, masking users’ votes while generating aggregated voting results. DecentDAO is building DAO tools and implementing such solutions.
(3) Secure Storage
As a decentralized public network for private data, Nillion can support quantum-secure hidden storage of sensitive data. This security introduces new storage use cases for crypto:
Messaging:A decentralized, quantum-secure messaging system that ensures complete user privacy. Mailchain uses Nillion to enable users to securely and privately store messages while being able to detect and analyze potential scams.
Passwords:NilQuantum is developing a solution based on Nillion to store user passwords in a quantum-secure manner in a decentralized manner.
Documents:Flux supports group messaging and crypto features such as token-gated access, in-app payments, and integration with other web3 services. Flux is built on top of the Nillion network, privately and securely storing documents on the network.
Hosting:By leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies like MPC, the Nillion network also has the unique ability to enable users to store keys and perform transactions in a cluster of their choice. Companies like Ambient, Interstellar or JLabs intend to develop hosting solutions on the Nillion network. In addition, companies like Salt are using blind computing capabilities to create private trading strategies, positioning the network as a truly decentralized MPC hosting network.
6, personalized AI and privacy protection are all the rage in the crypto space today. What do you think is the most interesting trend in personalized AI?
Since the emergence of generative AI in its current form, the industry has been moving more and more towards enabling these systems to benefit from personalization and customization. Big companies like OpenAI have launched custom GPTs while working to further iterate personalized chatbots, various companies have proprietary models developed in-house, and quite a few startups have been established, all dedicated to bringing personalized agents into people's lives.
What they have in common is that personal sensitive data is at the core of training and running these personalized models.
Really personalized AI requires all your data. Every message you've ever sent, everything that makes you you. Ask yourself this, would you hand over 10 years of your text conversations to an AI assistant (knowing that data will be owned by OpenAI)?
Most people would not. 59% of consumers are uncomfortable using personalized AI due to data privacy issues. Personalized AI will not achieve mass adoption as the “next internet” without private data processing.
Apple’s recent release of Apple Intelligence and focus on running AI models locally on the device and running more computationally intensive models in a secure hardware environment is a step in the right direction. Their focus on private AI is a huge validation of Nillion’s view on the need for blind computation.
While Apple is taking the first logical step in using Trusted Execution Environments, Nillion is developing cryptography that eliminates trust by creating truly decentralized privacy finality using techniques like Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and Homomorphic Encryption (HE).
Nillion — The base layer of the internet for all private data.
When Ethereum decentralized computation with smart contracts, the world changed. Today, Nillion is enabling the next wave of innovation by decentralizing trust in your most valuable data.
Letting you, and only you, own your data - unlocking mass adoption of personalized AI and countless other emerging technologies.
Nillion does this through blind computation.
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ZeZheng
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Huang Bo
Xu Lin
Cointelegraph